From the legal perspective, delays and inefficiency in the administration of justice undermine the notion of the rule of law.
Meting out justice, however, has a human face too, and inordinate delays can take a heavy toll on the victims of crime, their families and the perpetrators themselves.
Far too often have there been victims of crime and their families who have had to wait years on end before the court case against the perpetrator was concluded.
The latest example was the family of a woman, 77, who was killed in a hit-and-run road incident in Qawra in 2011. The family deemed the punishment “insulting” and slammed Malta’s “failed” judicial system.
How can that system justify making them wait nine “excruciating” years for the case to be concluded? Has justice really been done in this case or has the long lapse of time only compounded its perceived miscarriage?
Likewise, is it not “justice delayed, justice denied” every time a rehabilitated drug addict is sentenced to prison several years later, dealing a huge blow to the reform process that justice should promote?
Is it not justice in suspended animation when National Bank shareholders are left waiting for compensation 47 years after the bank was nationalised?
A similar fate has been experienced by many owners of expropriated properties awaiting compensation.
Has not justice actually been perverted when magistrates are constrained to grant bail because the case is taking too long to be concluded, only for the accused awaiting trial to reoffend?
This has been the case in incidents of domestic violence, for instance, with some even ending tragically.
Has justice really been done when a person wrongly convicted of a serious crime, even murder, is absolved by an appeals court on his death bed – or even posthumously – because hearings kept being put off? Is it not an outright injustice for a person awaiting trial, say for sexual abuse, to have a shadow hanging over him for ages – disrupting his whole life and perhaps even destroying his family – only to be cleared of a crime he never committed several years after he was first arraigned?
So many other examples can be listed. Each one is a tragic human story but also a blot on an institution that is rightly considered to be society’s ultimate bastion where justice is expected to be administered in an expeditious manner.
The failure, again and again, of justice to be done within a reasonable time breaks not only human rights but damages, sometimes beyond repair, hearts and minds too.
The role of the courts in the administration of justice is fundamental to the stability of society. The judiciary represents the last hope of the oppressed and the wronged.
A former South African chief justice once declared that “the executive might transgress, the legislature might become unruly but it has always been the judiciary that has stood the test of time by standing firm on the side of truth and justice”.
For truth and justice to be guaranteed, however, the courts must not only be fair, firm and impartial but also ensure they dispense justice in a timely fashion.
In their efforts to interpret the law faithfully, the courts take into account not just the written word but also its spirit.
Laws are not an end in themselves but a means to an end: to promote the common good while protecting every single member of society. Justice falls short of those aims when it takes forever to be delivered.
The human being must be retained at the centre of the administration of justice, lest justice ends up not being served at all.